For many people, the future comes as a surprise – or even a shock. But with strong forecasting skills, YOU can avoid future shock. You can adapt faster, and become better prepared to benefit from change.
In this course, you’ll build your future forecasting skills. You'll learn how to turn groups of "signals" (clues about the future) and "drivers" (global forces that influence the direction of change) into compelling future forecasts. Forecasts help you discover new possibilities and opportunities for yourself, your company, or any community you want to inspire to make a better future.
You'll also learn how to write future scenarios. Scenarios take forecasts one step further. They spark imagination and tell a story about what might happen if a forecast comes true. Scenarios help you evaluate: Is this a future I'm ready for? Is this a future I want?
Leading futurists from the Institute for the Future will show you exactly how it's done. They'll share with you the forecasts and scenarios they’re most excited about right now, and walk you through the key steps they took to create them. Then, it's your turn! You'll create a forecast and a scenario on any future topic you choose.
How will you benefit from taking this course? With strong forecasting skills, you'll get better at seeing the future before it happens. You'll be ready to consider possibilities that others never see coming or refuse to accept. You'll be able to help others prepare for and adapt to the future. You can decide which futures you want to make more likely, and which futures you want to prevent.
Many thanks to the Enlight Foundation and the Enlight Collaborative, which provided a grant to support the creation of this course.

Avaliações

DE

This was a great course that expanded and deepened my understanding of mapping signals and drivers to scenarios and forecasts.

MR

Nov 18, 2019

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

Great course, really built on the introductory course and helped the participant build confidence in forecasting the future

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How to Write a Future Scenario

You've forecast the future! Now what? This week, you'll learn how to write scenarios. A scenario takes your forecast one step further. It tells a story about what might happen IF your forecast comes true. A scenario will help YOU evaluate: Am I ready for this future? Is this a future I want? Scenarios are fun. Let's go explore some!

Ministrado por

Jane McGonigal

Transcrição

When it comes time to communicate your future forecasts to other people, one of the most effective strategies that you can use is to start with a scenario. What's the scenario? Well, it's a story that we tell about what the world might be like in the future, and it's based on a forecast, but it becomes a little bit more concrete, a little bit more immersive. When you present someone with a scenario, they can really situate themselves in that future and ask themselves, what would I feel like if I woke up in this world, what would I do, what might other people do, and it gives you a way to have a really personal connection with a possible future. What I'd like to do now is share with you a few examples of early-stage scenarios. Now, scenarios can be developed into short films or immersive virtual reality experiences, or you can present them in comic strips or short stories. But at the very early stage, a scenario it's just a few sentences, maybe a short paragraph, that describes a world. I'm going to share with you some of these early stage scenarios, and then we'll talk about the kinds of questions that you can ask people to consider when you share a scenario, so they can really develop some insight about that future. Are you ready for a world in which video faking algorithms are now so advanced? Faked videos are impossible to distinguish from real footage. These video faking algorithms can completely replace people's faces and speech to make it appear they've said or done anything the author intends. With this technology, anyone can manufacture video proof to back up any claim, and these video fakes are flooding major video-sharing, social media, and live streaming platforms, including all of the platforms that you love to use. Are you ready for a world in which facial recognition technology is now a mainstream tool available to any individual or any organization? Subscribers can tap into a global database with over one billion faces indexed and clearly recognizable. Cameras are installed in most public and private spaces now to take advantage of the technology, and a new ecosystem of apps emerges that integrates facial recognition across all product categories, and everything we do facial recognition in dating apps, shopping apps, neighborhood apps, games, and more. Are you ready for a world in which read-and-write neurotech implants are a reality? A device can be implanted in your brain that reads your thoughts and feelings, and also writes new artificial thoughts and memories directly into your brain. The best version of this product successfully intercepts 80 percent of all data that is sent to your brain's hippocampus, giving you close-to-perfect recall of anything you have directly read, seen, or experienced. This neuro-data is saved in the Cloud, where it can be sent to other peoples' in plants, so they can remember what you have read, seen, or experienced. These scenarios are all based on existing technologies and existing startups, even the read-and-write neurotech one, and I know you will want to see them for yourself. So I will make sure that we have links to all of the signals that informed these forecasts and scenarios in the reading materials for this week. The thing about a scenario is when you give it to someone, you want to use it to start to provoke conversation and insight. So here's some of the questions that I always ask people to consider when they are playing with a new scenario, and if you'd like to get hands-on with us, you can pick any of those three scenarios and ask yourself the same questions. What new things might happen in this world? What would be different from today for you personally? What would you personally worry about in this world? What would you worry about on behalf of your company or as a government or any organization that you are a part of, a school, a hospital? What could go wrong for this group, and why in the future? Who benefits from this future? What do they gain? What emotions do people feel more of in this future? What do people start to do to adapt or cope in future? Who could exploit this future? What would they try to game or cheat or take advantage of? What actions might people take in this world to make the world better? Any of these questions could spark some really worthwhile ideas, help you think about the choices that we're making today, the technologies we're building and adapting, the businesses that we're building, and help you play out some possible consequences before we're actually living in them. In the next video, I'm going to walk you through a hands-on process of creating scenario, and then bringing it to life in a more immersive form, into a short documentary video from the future. I'll see you there.